Mark Reviews Movies: NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 16, 2021

Our protagonist is silent for most of the prologue of Nightmare Alley. He says nothing but acts in ways that speak volumes. At first, we see him dragging a bag—about the size of a human body and with a shape inside that matches—into the middle of the main room of an old farmhouse. Upon dropping the lumpy cloth container into a hole in the floorboards, the man pours some gasoline into the gap and lights an extended trail of the fluid with a match.

That's not the full extent of this tale's prologue, which continues to see the man find his way far from the farm and into the tenuous embrace of a traveling carnival, but this sequence—the burning, the disposal of this shape, the relationship this stranger had to the body when the form was still alive—is what Stanton "Stan" Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) returns to in his moments of uncertainty. There are plenty of them for this guy, whose silence betrays the gift of gab with which he discovers he has been blessed. He finds those doubtful moments as his fortunes rise within the world of the carnival, as well as beyond and, more importantly, his sense of morality doesn't sink, so much as the lack of it reveals what kind of person he really is.

The film, adapted from William Lindsay Gresham's novel, comes from co-writer/director Guillermo del Toro, who is best known for his tales of fantastical horrors of the supernatural, the science-fiction, or the stuff of dread dreams. This one, co-written by Kim Morgan, is almost certainly the filmmaker's most grounded film, in that its horrors and terrors are exclusively about the dregs of human nature and behavior.

Our seemingly mysterious protagonist, who really isn't too much of a mystery if we take the pieces of that opening puzzle for what they have to be, does play with the supernatural. He does so, though, in the only way it exists in the real world: as a game, a con, a parlor trick, a bit of clever people-reading, or any other way that one wants to describe the works of a charlatan, trying to manipulate and exploit others for his own benefit.

The story (previously adapted, by the way, in a great film version from 1947 by director Edmund Goulding, although this one isn't nearly as forgiving of the main character throughout and, especially, in the end) really begins when Stan arrives at the carnival, just around the start of World War II. He checks out the sights, the shows, and the gimmicks, with the resident "geek"—a helpless addict who's promised booze and opium to tear through live chickens with his teeth—earning some horrified sympathy. The carnival head (played by Willem Dafoe) hires Stan to help pack up and unload the show at its next stop, but he stays on and starts to learn the ropes.

From Zeena (Toni Collette) and her alcoholic husband/sidekick Pete (David Strathairn), Stan discovers the tricks of a psychic, as well as the promise of a secret code that can improve the illusion. In Molly (Rooney Mara), a performer whose flashy act involves currents of electricity, he finds love, a naïve potential partner for his future success, or both.

When an unexpected tragedy strikes the carnival (either an accident or a case of murder, although Stan relies on his silence in that matter), Stan and Molly head out on their own, and Stan's "mind-reading" abilities gain a growing audience. One skeptical member of that audience is Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychiatrist, who eventually becomes Stan's partner in a more lucrative variety of the same performance.

The storytelling here is pretty straightforward and, once we get the gist of the kind of person Stan is (which is to say right at the film's start), simplistic. All of this is no more than a study of a professional liar, manipulator, and schemer, who makes a lot of money preying on the beliefs and grief of those who can afford such spiritual comforts. One couple wants to contact their son, who died during the Great War, and, in a particularly chilling moment, ultimately arrive at the logical conclusion of such spiritual certainty. Meanwhile, an eerily cold-blooded Richard Jenkins plays an inordinately wealthy magnate who wants to contact a deceased love—for reasons that become increasingly disturbing with each new revelation.

The mood here is oppressive, not only because del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen bathe the sideshows in imposing shadow and the Art Deco interiors in ethereal glow, but also because the screenplay's approach to the likes of Stan, Lilith, and, to a less significant but more obvious extent, Jenkins' character is unapologetically without simplistic moralization. These are cunning and ruthless people, conspiring with and against each other for their own clear or hidden gain.

The performances back up that perspective. Cooper gives the trickiest performance here, of course, playing a man compensating for his failings and weaknesses with the false power of his trade, without ever making him sympathetic (This is true even in the character's final scene, the film's final shot, which serves as an emotional breakthrough for him but a moment of grimly amusing situational irony for us). In case it isn't clear yet, the supporting cast is deep in terms of the number and quality of actors within it. While Mara is serviceable as the pure spot of moral decency, the atmosphere and material are better suited for the droll delivery, piercing glares, and bristling sensuality of Blanchett's work.

Nightmare Alley revels in the darkness of its world and its characters. The result is grimly effective.

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